Chilling new details in Sandy Hook shooting

The 48-page report lays out the horror of Sandy Hook Elementary School in methodical detail. It’s all there: The sound of crashing glass, the smell of gunpowder, the shell casings, the jammed pistol, the locked doors.

Text Size

-

+

reset

What’s missing: The why.

Why did Adam Lanza, a troubled young man, kill his mother as she lay asleep in her bed, then shoot his way into his old Connecticut elementary school, where he gunned down 20 children and six adults before committing suicide?

“Unfortunately, that question may never be answered conclusively,” the lead investigator, State’s Attorney Stephen Sedensky III, concluded in a report released Monday. He determined that Lanza planned his rampage in Newtown, Conn. on Dec. 14, 2012. That he acted alone. But, Sedensky wrote, “there is no clear indication why he did so, or why he targeted Sandy Hook Elementary School.”

Sedensky said no criminal charges would be filed. “With the issuance of this report,” he wrote, “the investigation is closed.”

But the memories remain open.

Anticipating Monday’s report, the potential release of 911 tapes from that day and the upcoming anniversary, Newtown First Selectman Pat Llodra wrote on a community blog that “each of these happenings has the potential to feel like a body blow – it takes our breath away and we struggle to regain our balance.”

The only thing to do, Llodra wrote to her friends and her neighbors, is “tap into that inner strength we have called upon again and again over this past year to confront what we must, manage that hurt as best we can, and put it behind us somehow.”

Sedensky’s report fills out details of Lanza’s life and of that unthinkable day. The report refers to him throughout as “the shooter,” — never Adam, or Lanza, just “the shooter.” Though he had a fairly typical childhood, playing in concerts and interacting with classmates, he had grown increasingly isolated in the years leading up to the shooting. He had lost touch with his father and his brother; he shut himself in his mother’s house in Newtown, with black trash bags taped over his bedroom windows to shut out the sun. He changed clothes many times a day, demanded that only certain dishes be used for certain foods and told his mother she couldn’t put up a Christmas tree because he disliked Christmas.

He disliked cats, too, so his mother gave hers away.

Lanza, 20, spent much of his time playing video games — many of them violent, but also “Super Mario Brothers” and “Dance, Dance Revolution.” He used to drive to a local movie theater, in fact, and play “Dance, Dance Revolution” in the lobby for up to 10 hours straight, dressed always in a gray hoodie sweatshirt and slacks. One of the acquaintances he saw often there remembers occasionally going to watch a movie with Lanza after a dance marathon and chatting with him about current events and chimpanzees.

Most of the time, though, Lanza was not that easy with his interactions.

In 2005, the report notes, “the shooter was diagnosed with Asperger’s Disorder and was described as presenting with significant social impairments and extreme anxiety. It was also noted that he lacked empathy and had very rigid thought processes. He had a literal interpretation of written and verbal material. In the school setting, the shooter had extreme anxiety and discomfort with changes, noise, and physical contact with others.”

Nancy Lanza worried about her son. He wouldn’t let her into his bedroom, not even to clean. He communicated with her only by email, though they lived under the same roof. When the power went out during Hurricane Sandy, he refused to leave for a hotel. She told friends that he had no emotions, no feelings. She worried aloud about what he would do without her.